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Cited by 114Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentAttachment and Relationship DynamicsChild and Animal Learning Development

Imagining your child’s mind: psychosocial adjustment and mothers’ ability to predict their children’s attributional response styles.

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Sharp, Carla, Fonagy, Peter, Goodyer, Ian M.·2006·British Journal of Developmental Psychology
DOI 10.1348/026151005x82569
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Abstract

One class of parent–child interaction that has recently received attention is a mother's engagement with her child at a mental level. The current study operationalizes this notion by asking the mothers of 354 7‐ to 11‐year‐old children drawn from a larger community sample ( N =659) to guess the responses of their children, who, in turn, were asked to attribute thoughts to their peers in distressing peer‐related scenarios. The following predictions were made: (1) mothers would be above chance in the accuracy by which they predicted their children's overall attributional styles; (2) increased maternal accuracy would be an important correlate of reduced psychopathology symptoms in children; and (3) poor maternal accuracy would associate with a maladaptive child attributional response style characterized by unrealistic and overly positive attributions. Results suggested that maternal accuracy was normally distributed with mothers accurately guessing the responses of their children for about half of the social scenarios. Furthermore, mothers were shown to be above chance in the accuracy by which they predicted their children's overall attributional styles. Maternal accuracy was found to be related to child psychosocial adjustment (reduced scores on child psychopathology measures), whilst poor maternal accuracy was associated with ineffective social‐cognitive reasoning, as indexed by an unrealistic and overly positive child attributional style. Findings are discussed within the context of the burgeoning literature linking attachment, family talk about feelings and thoughts, and parental mind‐mindedness.

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  • The maternal ability to mentalize painful emotional experiences is especially crucial for the child's development.

    “Fourthly, in our opinion some components of the parental reflective functioning, such as the painful affect mentalization versus non-painful affect mentalization, deserve more in-depth investigation since some studies (Fonagy et al., 2002; Sharp et al., 2006; Borelli et al., 2012; Rosso et al., 2015) demonstrated that the maternal ability to mentalize painful emotional experiences is especially”

    From Mentalizing makes parenting work: a review about parental reflective functioning and clinical interventions to improve it (2017) · cites this paper as Sharp et al., 2006

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Achenbach, T.M., Howell, C.T., McConaughy, S.H., & Stanger, C. (1995). Six-year predictors of problems in a national sample of children and youth: I. Cross- informant syndromes. Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 34(3), 336-347.
  2. Dunn, J. (1996). Family conversations and the development of social understanding, In B. Bernstein & J. Brannen (Eds.), Children, research and policy: Essays for Barbara Tizard (pp. 81 95). Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis.
  3. Sharp, C. (2000). Biased minds: Theory of mind and emotional-behaviour disorders of middle childhood. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis: University of Cambridge.

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Related

Authors
Sharp, C., Fonagy, P., & Goodyer, I. M.
Affiliations
  • Baylor College of Medicine (US)
  • University of Cambridge (GB)
Corresponding author
Sharp, Carla
ORCID
Venue
British Journal of Developmental Psychology
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2006-03
Volume
24
Issue
1
Pages
197-214
ISSN
  • 0261-510X (ISSN-L)
  • 2044-835X
DOI
10.1348/026151005x82569
OpenAlex
W1997300568
Cited by
114
References
79
Citations by year
2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 8
FWCI
2.95
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor, 1758 d)
Locations
  • British Journal of Developmental Psychology (publishedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
Keywords
maternal mind-mindedness, parent-child interaction, child psychosocial adjustment, child psychopathology, attachment

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